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Saturday, August 23, 2014

Let's Go Camping - Campfire

What do you think happens to fire when it burns? Autumn says "it breaks and starts a forest fire." Lachlan says "it burns and firefighters come and unburn it."
What color does it change to? Black

As we sat at breakfast I recited the Opening Rhyme with them.

Five hotdogs roasting on the fire at camp,
(Wiggle all five fingers on one hand over the open palm of the other hand.)

One got hot and it went BAM!
(Clap loudly on BAM then take away one finger.)

We poured water on the burning logs!Shhhhhhhhhhh!No more burning dogs!
(Pretend to pour on a bucket of water and make a sizzling sound.)

Then repeat with 4 hotdogs and so on.

The kids loved this. We had to do it several times. I am not sure who comes up with all of these, but there is something like this for every morning. It is quite impressive.

After they got done eating they started on their Crackling Campfire Art. Mother Goose Time provided us with small cardboard tubes, caps for the tube, sand and crackly cellophane. The kids colored the tubes, we filled the tubes with sand, glued on the caps and then they taped the cellophane to the tube. When you shake the tube it sounds like fire crackling.

Did I mention my boys wanted "cheetah eyes". Perfect use for my eyeliner.

Along with this art activity we asked, what sounds do you hear at a campfire? Lachlan loves making a fire in our fire pit in the backyard with Dad. So he knew the answer to this. "Pop, pop, and then little fires float away."

As they were working on their craft I started preparing the materials for Fire, the next lesson. Since this was Day 4, we were learning about the number 4. I cut out 4 flames and blue squares for them to write out 1 to 4 on.

I actually had this sitting out for a while before we got to the lesson. Lachlan hopped up on the learning tower and saw them sitting there. I told him that he was to write the numbers on the blue paper. So he got started. He was enjoying himself so much he just kept going and going. Jeff was in the kitchen cooking dinner and so he helped Lachlan when he got stumped. But he wrote all the way to 20 and then wanted to know what came next. He was facing the number line on the wall and used that as a guide and wanted to know what came after 20. It was a fun and unexpected thing to watch. The numbers were all very well written as well.

The next morning we actually did the lesson part of it. I put the flames out and he had to use 4 of the blue water papers to put it out. He matched up his written numbers here with the flames.

I asked them, how do you think fires start in the forest? Autumn said "by lightning." I was very impressed by her quick response. I continued to prod a bit because of the topic of the day. What do you think happens if someone starts a campfire and doesn't put it out? Then we talked about how a campfire would spread and moved into the Responsible Campers lesson. MGT gave us responsible feathers. We talked about how to be responsible around a campfire. I asked them, should you run around a campfire or walk carefully around it? Walk carefully.

There was a really cute activity to go along with this. Make a pretend campfire, sit some stuffed animals around the fire, shake your crackling campfire art props and say "it's getting too hot!" Then have the kids move the stuffed animals back and away from the fire. I am going to keep this one in the back of my mind for later. We didn't do it on this day, we just talked about fire safety. But it's an awesome idea.

We ended our day with the Letter F. F is for fire after all. On the F page of our My Little Journal there was a picture of a campfire to color and then tape the letter F card to the page. We talked about what starts with the /f/ sound and Lachlan had fun coming up with all sorts of words. This is his new favorite activity. He doesn't necessarily know the name of the letter but if I tell him the sound he can come up with other words that start with that sound. I think we are well on our way to flying through letters. He is super interested now.

One day when he was telling me two words that started with the same letter my jaw dropped and I exclaimed "how did you know that?" I just do he said as he shrugged his shoulders, like no bid deal. I told him, stop that, stop learning, I don't want you to learn to read because that means you are grown up. I don't want you to grow up. He smiled a happy and sly smile. If you grow up you can read your own books and you can read your own games, TV shows and signs and you won't need me to read them for you.

I wasn't sure when I said it, how he would respond. I was hoping to find a way to get him excited about learning his letters and learning to read, because so far he has had no interest. This was weeks ago now that we had this little conversation and it is still motivation for him. He breaks out new words that start with the same letter all the time now and I always tell him to stop, no don't grow up. And he always smiles with pride. It's the perfect example of reverse psychology, but it worked!

1 comment:

Hi! I just got your email in regards to MGT community of bloggers and decided to check out your blog. :-) I love the Experience God add on you posted about and we have the same story time Bible and love it!! I'm excited to start our preschool homeschool using MGT! Will continue following your blog for added ideas.

Every year I create a Shutterfly book for each of my kids. January 8th through January 7th of the next year for Lachlan and February 13th t...

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